I know I didn't purchase anything... Of course I didn't: I'd have to have a balance showing in my client in the first place to even consider that.

My main concern right now is getting the 20.00 BTC that is trapped in said block chain. MULTIPLE client restarts have slowly increased the block count, but only in small, incremental factors and I'd be here until 3 fucking AM restarting the damn thing if I wanted it to finish that way...

There's NO GOOD reason for this to be happening... The transaction record at blockexplorer.com shows it as received.

* close the Bitcoin client * in Finder, open Library/Application Support/Bitcoin inside your home directory * copy the file wallet.dat to a safe place (don't move it, just copy it) * delete all other files in this directory (NOT wallet.dat) * restart the Bitcoin client

The client will show 0 blocks and will start downloading the blockchainagain. Once your block count matches the one at bitcionwatch.com yourcoins will appear in the balance.

I followed these instructions, still no success. I'm beginning to become very exasperated at the idea that bitcoin has LOST this $13 US of my money forever.

I used coinpal to add what i thought would be 20 BTC to my wallet, but somehow the client must have disconnected during the initial blockchain download, and now it can't re-initiate. My (similarly baffled) merchant provided me with some instructions, which I quoted above before noting that they were ineffective.

I used coinpal to add what i thought would be 20 BTC to my wallet, but somehow the client must have disconnected during the initial blockchain download, and now it can't re-initiate. My (similarly baffled) merchant provided me with some instructions, which I quoted above before noting that they were ineffective.

Which part are you having difficulties with?

I know you're agitated but that is the first mention of a coinpal transaction in this thread.I tried to buy 10 bitcoins a few hours ago and they don't even have that so how long has it been in limboHonestly you should have waited for the block chain download and then used bitcoin faucet to test the system first.Hindsight is always 20/20 right.Your best bet is to turn port forwarding on in your router (3 connections isn't good) and wait for the blockchain to download I hope it all works out for you.

You forgot to tell that you bought 20 BTC at coinpal, there only were "some 20 BTC from somewhere" disappearing. Of course it makes sense now, at least your description, not the bug, that one is weird.

Im not an expert myself, but if I was you, I would copy and save the "wallet.dat" from your bitcoin folder.Then close the client and uninstall/delete bitcoin.

If you know how its done, open incoming port 8333 (TCP) for better connectivity.

Then re-download the newest version, install, and before executing, insert the "wallet.dat" (copied before) into the fresh installation.Execute bitcoin, and wait until it has downloaded the complete blockchain ( more than 116900 Blocks).Depending on connectivity and bandwith this can take several hours.

However, this will not check the validity of the blocks, so you'll have to trust that these are valid. Also, you'll then want to restart you client with the -rescan flag so that it finds the transaction (assuming the nightly mirror you download is more recent than the transaction).